The Name’s Ash. Benjamin Turn to Ash.

December 10, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

We usually say that our interviews are a pleasure. Our lawyer advises it. But this one really was. A delightful, extensive ramble with Benjamin Holesapple, editor and publisher of the new weird and horror fiction magazine Turn to Ash. Interesting thoughts for writers, readers and editors. The second issue is about to come out, so this seemed an ideal time to get with it…

old-radio-931432_960_720 — coming to you from a radio station somewhere in untamed ohio

“Uh… hello. Is that you? Is that Mr Leek? This is my first time calling, so I might not get it right. I’ve never used a phone before and I’m a little nervous. I found this one, you see, and it has so many buttons and lights that I almost gave up. I knew that you wanted to hear from me, though. That you’ve wanted to hear from me for a long time, even if you didn’t realise it.

“My name? Maybe… maybe we could come back to that. Let me wipe the front of this thing, it’s a bit sticky. I might have fibbed a little when I said I found it. I suppose you could say that I took it, but he didn’t want it any more, the man who was walking around the woods. He was bent up kind of odd, and he’d dropped it on the moss.

“I haven’t rung the police, no. I don’t want to talk to them, only to you. Please don’t think I’m strange, but I don’t like calling you Chuck. It seems disrespectful. Mr Leek is better, unless we got to know each other. I wish we could, but you’d have to come out here, and I’m not sure the others would like that…”

What’s that about? You’ll find out later.

An Interview with Mr Holesapple

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Benjamin. Great to have you here. Usually before we go into the burning topic of the day (Turn to Ash in this case), we like to know a bit about folk. So, what is a Benjamin when it comes down to it? A hard-bitten enthusiast of twisted transgressive fiction, a relaxed explorer of weird fantasy, or a lover of old-style pulp? Give us a quick picture.

Benjamin: I did that thing that I think a lot of people do: I grew up reading a ton of horror and other fantastic fiction, but around the time I started college, I decided that I needed to focus on the “serious” stuff. I left King, Barker, Jackson, Bradbury, HPL, etc. on the shelf for several years while I read primarily literary fiction and non-fiction. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties (I’m 35 now) that I started sniffing around horror fiction again, and stumbled into, first, Ligotti, and then Pugmire. From there, I was in a frenzy to catch up on everything I’d been missing.

So, while I’ve been a fan of horror and the weird for most of my life, I still feel like a bit of a neophyte, as it’s only been the last 7 years or so that I’ve re-immersed myself in the genre. Becoming reacquainted with horror fiction in the age of the internet has been overwhelming, to say the least. Not only do I have to catch up on all the good stuff that was being released in my 20’s, now I have ready access to all the stuff from the last hundred years or so that I didn’t even know existed in my previous incarnation as a reader of horror lit. That wasn’t a very quick picture. TL;DR version: I’m a tulip in a thunderstorm.

greydog: How did you get into the genre(s) right at the start? What were your introductory books, films, comics or whatever, the ones which really hooked you when you were younger?

Benjamin: I was a creepy kid. I don’t really recall ever not being interested in monsters. Creature from the Black Lagoon and Them! were on constant rotation throughout my childhood. I accidentally caught most of Hellraiser when I was about 7 or 8. My older sister and her friends were watching it, and I snuck a viewing in from the next room. There have not been too many days where I haven’t had a vision of ol’ skinless Frank dancing through my head ever since. At grade school book fairs, I stocked up on the Bunnicula and My Teacher is an Alien series. Corny little books, but they were indicative of what was to come.

I was also extremely interested in the “real life” weird at an early age, and checked out every book in the library on ghosts, UFOs, and cryptids again and again. I grew up about an hour north of Point Pleasant, WV, where the Mothman flap happened in the late 1960’s, and in the 80’s people in the area still discussed it as a matter of fact. In the 5^th grade, I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, and that really sealed the deal. By the following year, I’d read Christine and Salem’s Lot, and picked up a couple of the Del Rey paperback editions of Lovecraft. One of them, The Lurking Fear and Other Stories contained “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” which was, and probably still is, my favorite Lovecraft story. Man, all this reflecting on my childhood is going to save me a fortune in therapist’s bills.

greydog: That’s the sole purpose of this site, but don’t tell anyone. And when did all this coalesce into the idea for putting out a magazine?

Benjamin: From roughly 2004 to 2014, I ran a very small record label and recording studio with a good friend of mine. When he moved to Texas, we decided to fold the operation, and after a few months of trying to get used to enjoying all the free time I suddenly had, I started looking for other outlets in which to keep myself occupied and entertained.

Very briefly, I tried putting together amateur electronics kits, but I’ve always hated soldering things, as I tend to burn myself quite a bit. A friend and former bandmate and I had been discussing modern horror fiction, and he asked if he could send me something that he’d been working on. I said yes, and wound up making some notes on how I thought he could improve it, and after further discussion, I told him I’d publish it whenever he was finished if he wanted me to.

I’d spent ten years producing and selling records, so I thought “why not books?” I’m still waiting on that novella, but the idea to start publishing books started gnawing at me after our conversation. I was thinking about other things I could publish while waiting for my friend’s novella, and the idea of doing a zine really appealed to me. I’ve been collecting issues of Whispers and Crypt of Cthulhu for years, and I’m an avid follower of The Lovecraft eZine.

isfdb, cover - peter smith — isfdb, cover – peter smith

In January 2016, I settled on the idea of doing a zine in the style of Whispers, using the Lee Brown Coye tribute issue as my Bible. I’d been kicking names for the press around in my head for months. I wanted something that tangentially tied the endeavour to the punk/avant-whatever music scene I’d been a part of since I was a teen. “Turn to Ash” is the name of a song by the seminal 90’s Columbus, OH, punk band, Gaunt. They are one of my absolute favorite bands ever, and largely the reason I came to Columbus to make music in the first place.

“Turn to Ash” also happened to sound quite good as the title of a repository of dark fiction, so I ran with it. I registered the business name, the website, and recruited my friend and fantastic artist, Julian Dassai, to whip up a logo. In February, I put out the call for submissions, and at the end of August, Volumes 1 and 0 went live. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind year.

Turn to Ash Emerges

greydog: Turn to Ash 0 was a striking collection of stories, made available as part of your launch campaign. What was the thinking behind that?

Benjamin: Thanks! Volume 0 served a few key purposes. First and foremost, I had a glut of stories that I wanted to publish. When I put out the call for subs, I really didn’t think I’d get much of a response; maybe a few friends of friends, that kind of thing. In six weeks, I got just south of 500 fiction submissions. I didn’t want to overstuff the first issue, so I thought about the idea of doing a smaller, promotional issue.

I ran with that idea for a while, and was working on the layout for Vol. 0 while I was still doing edits and such for Vol. 1. I’d never done layout for so much as a pamphlet before, let alone a book, so I was able to learn a few valuable lessons working on Vol. 0 (from redoing it three times from scratch), and since it was a significantly smaller book, it didn’t cost me as much time redoing all the formatting as it would have if I had tackled Vol. 1 first.

Eventually, I decided instead of using it as a promotion for the first volume, I’d just include it as a bonus to the first 50 people who ordered Vol. 1, and kept it under wraps until ordering went live. People love their super limited edition stuff, so I thought it would be a good way to motivate buyers to try out a book from a brand new micropress. There are four original pieces of fiction in Vol. 0, and I really love them. That’s the only bummer about the limited-edition thing, those stories won’t be available anywhere else until they get collected or picked up for reprint in another publication.

greydog: This is a peculiar time for weird, horror and speculative magazines, in that so many new ones are being launched. Many of these are obviously a labour of love. Any idea as to why we’re suddenly in this publishing boom?

Benjamin: I think it’s a natural response to readership and authorship expanding in the genre. I think there is a strong DIY element in the community that’s mirrored in the punk, metal, and noise communities. In those communities, there’s a lifecycle that’s something like, “go see a band – ok, now go start a band – ok, so there are 5 new bands now, somebody start a label – ok, somebody bought your record/tape and came to your show, now they’re going to start a band – ok, somebody went to their show, and now they want to start a band, so now there are 10 new bands, somebody start another label…” and that kind of grows in that way until it can’t any more.

That blurring of the line between creator and consumer is one of the things that drew me to this community in the first place. I spoke earlier about finding W. H. Pugmire early on in my return to horror fiction, and he really personified that connection to the punk ethos for me. Obviously, you need a few more consumers than creators or the house falls down, and that’s my only worry with the recent explosion; that the ambition of those of us making these things will outpace the readership and many of us will fall flat on our faces. So far, so good, though, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

greydog: What was the most difficult part of the process of getting your magazine into print?

Benjamin: Thus far, Turn to Ash is a one-man operation, and there’s been a steep learning curve. I was somewhat familiar with Photoshop before I started doing this, but learning how to use InDesign and Illustrator was daunting. Making sure I’m staying communicative with my collaborators whilst doing all the other work has been tough, too. My memory is terrible. Spreadsheets are my friend.

greydog: And if you’ll excuse the marketing term, what would you say are the unique selling points of Turn to Ash? Its tone, its direction, or just a commitment to quality fiction? Do you see yourself as having some definable or indefinable difference to other new arrivals?

Benjamin: Well, I’d say since Travis Neisler has declared us bitter rivals, the most important thing to note is that Turn to Ash is not Ravenwood Quarterly. I kid, of course! We have the most courteous of bitter rivalries. I have the first two issues of Ravenwood, and I love them, and Travis is an excellent guy.

I would like to think that the range of fiction presented in Turn to Ash will become a hallmark. The weird is my bread and butter, but I am going to strive to include more fiction that lays outside those boundaries. Adrian Luden’s “Sod Webworms” from Vol. 1 is a good example of that. Nothing potentially supernatural going on there, just a good punch in the gut. I’m very lucky to have regular non-fiction columns from Jose Cruz and James Newman, too. They both do great stuff in very different realms, and I think they do a lot to elevate the zine. I hope that any future themed issues will continue to be very unique in theme and format.

greydog: For any writers reading this, is there a sentence (or two) which encapsulates what you want from them?

Benjamin: Dark fiction of any flavour with a strong, emotional resonance. Monsters are cool, too.

greydog: You began with print, but we understand that you’re considering an e-format version as well. Was that due to demand?

Benjamin: Yeah, I got a lot of feedback about that. The print edition will still be priority #1 for me, but I understand the way a lot of people read is changing, and I owe it to the authors to get their work in front as many eyeballs as I can. I will continue to try and incentivise the purchase of the print edition as best I can, and I’ll likely work on a way to sell the two in a package, but the e-book thing is another one of those steep learning curves that I’m in the middle of tackling right now.

greydog: Turn to Ash 2 will have a specific, and rather unusual, theme – the radio caller. Tell us a bit about Chuck Leek and where he came from.

Benjamin: Charles “Chuck” Leek and the town of Orion, Ohio have been bouncing around in my head in various incarnations for about four years now. The character obviously owes a great deal to Art Bell, whose Coast to Coast AM program I’ve been obsessed with since I was a teenager, but the initial idea was to have a town that existed in one of John Keel’s “window areas,” and a sort of paranormal news man who reported on the weird goings-on in town.

Late one night, working on Vol. 1, the idea occurred to me to have a selection of fiction modelled after one of the old Ghost to Ghost Halloween specials that Coast used to do. I returned to the idea of the paranormal news man, turned him into a talk show host whose name is a reference to both Charles Fort and John Keel, put Don Imus’ cowboy hat on his head, and we were off to the races.

Turn the Radio On

greydog: Great idea. Because we’re UK-based, we’ll ask a question we tried out on Matthew Bartlett and Tom Breen a while ago (see our mega double interview – tag team horror ). Local radio seems to be more influential in North America than over here, and comes up in a lot of US horror stories. What’s your take on that?

Benjamin: I appreciate you trying it out on Matthew and Tom first. This way, I know it’s not a cursed question or hex or something. There are already two canaries in this coal mine! I’m sure they probably gave better answers than I will, but I’ll drop my two cents and see if they bounce.

I don’t know if it’s at all the same in the UK, but just about anywhere in the US, a quick scan of the AM dial will yield a handful of staticky, barely-there transmissions – usually a fire-and-brimstone, old-time-religion sermon or someone shouting some kind of extreme political ideology. The airwaves are haunted with flickering, ephemeral ghosts shrieking strange gospels. It’s creepy stuff, and it makes you wonder what sort of lean-to or underground bunker these yahoos are broadcasting from, who, if anyone, is actually listening to this stuff, and if any of the parties involved have furniture made of human remains.

greydog: We sort of wish we’d grown up with that now. And you can show off some of the authors/pieces for Issue Two right here if you want to – give folk a taste of what they can expect.

Benjamin: The very first person I contacted about the issue was Jonathan Raab, author and imperator at Muzzleland Press. His Gonzo take on high-strange horror is perfect for the frame story in the issue – Chuck’s rather unusual night hosting his paranormal call-in show. The rest of the fiction is presented as calls from Chuck’s audience. I don’t want to give away too many specifics, but the stories hit a lot of the notes you’d expect if you’ve ever listened to Coast or any of the shows like it. Though many of the tales are far, far weirder than anything ever heard on late-night radio.

The line-up of “callers” includes Rebecca J. Allred, Joseph Bouthiette Jr, Evan Dicken, Kurt Fawver, Joanna Michal Hoyt, S. L. Edwards, Thomas Mavroudis, Betty Rocksteady, Joseph Pastula, A.P. Sessler, and Martin Rose. There’s also the aforementioned non-fiction pieces by Jose and James, and an interview with Matthew M. Bartlett by Gordon White.

greydog: Excellent. We have to ask about ‘Them!’ while we have you – you even brought it up yourself, earlier. Seminal, a highpoint in old cinema, a commentary of the risks of atomic power and lots of other good things, as far as we’re concerned. Are we right that you feel the same way about the film?

Benjamin: Absolutely. It’s near the high-water mark of the “atomic power run amok” genre in my mind, second only to Godzilla, and one of only a handful of 50’s creature features that still holds up pretty well today. The film has a quick pace, but manages to remain downright spooky in the first third, up to and including the bit where the until-then catatonic kid starts screaming “Them! Them!” when she smells the formic acid. I’ve always felt that Them! must’ve been a big influence on Cameron’s Aliens, from the queen alien, right down to Ripley going to town on the eggs with a flamethrower.

greydog: It’s a joy. It even features an early appearance by Leonard Nimoy (uncredited), for goodness sake! Finally, any ideas for Turn to Ash 3, or is that too far in the distance to contemplate?

Benjamin: I’m still busy putting the finishing touches on Turn to Ash Vol. 2, but once that is ready to ship (sometime in December) I’ll be open to submissions once again. I’ll put out the word in the usual places, and I’ll probably stay open until mid-February, with the goal to have the issue out by early spring. It’ll be another non-themed issue, like 0 or 1, and will probably land somewhere between the two in terms of the number of stories and page count. I already have two stories purchased for Vol. 3, and I’ll be looking for six or eight more.

greydog: Many thanks for joining us today and giving us the lowdown. We wish Turn to Ash great success.

Benjamin: Thanks for inviting me to hang out in the land of Lurchers!

You can find out more, and get hold of issues of Turn to Ash below:

www.turntosash.com

www.turntoash.storenvy.com

Next week on greydogtales, more stuff. More weird stuff, with the occasional added longdog. Do pop your email in top left if you want to be warned…

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Ghost Hunting at Hanging Rock

December 7, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Yes, it’s our mid-week medley, that popular feature where people tell us about exciting stuff and then we forget to mention them anyway. Today, Django goes into complete reversal, the charming, erudite Tim Prasil has been given parole to edit another anthology, and Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is revisited in a new e-book from Ansible Editions.

First, that lurcher note. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single longdog needs his bottom scratched. Django is the least prey-oriented lurcher we have ever had, but he really is obsessed with being the wrong way round. And with being somewhat of a kangaroo, but that’s not relevant here.

Ever since we took him on, we have noticed his limited interest in having his front end attended to. Our late Jade used to like a nuzzle now and then. Chilli is nose-insistent to the point of knocking the glasses off your face so she can shove her cold, wet proboscis in your eye. Twiglet was constantly muzzle-to-muzzle, usually with her tongue up your nose. Django, however, was always one for a scritch around his tail or haunches, and in the last few months he’s developed reversing to a fine art.

His standard attempt to grab attention now is by backing into you forcefully until you scratch his bottom. If this doesn’t work, and you’re low enough down, he plonks his rear down on you. As JLG regularly lays on the floor to ease his rubbish spine, this leaves your jolly writer-chum with a large, heather-brindled lurcher sat on his shoulder, like an alarmingly mutated parrot. Given that Django is muscular and over 30 kilos, this is not entirely comfortable.

We are watching this development with interest. Either we try to teach him that a little ear noogie is preferable, or we build an automated bottom-scratcher. Or we teach him to say ‘Pieces of Eight’ when we have visitors. It’s a hard one, that.

A Multitude of Ghosts

As for debonair man-about-college Tim Prasil, we are delighted that Coachwhip Publications have published a second of his period anthologies – Those Who Haunt Ghosts: A Century of Ghost Hunter Fiction.

“This collection of ghost hunter fiction–28 short stories and novellas from the 1820s to the 1920s–includes such renowned authors as Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Henry James, Charlotte Riddell, Ambrose Bierce, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Algernon Blackwood, Rudyard Kipling, Sax Rohmer, and H.P. Lovecraft. With an enlightening introduction and helpful footnotes provided by supernatural fiction scholar Tim Prasil, this book is a first-of-its-kind source for this distinctive branch of ghost fiction and will be a treasured addition to any ghost-story library.”

If you’re not familiar with Tim’s work, we once dubbed him the Occult Detective Detective, because he spends so much time ferreting out such folk. His first anthology was Giving Up the Ghosts: Short-Lived Occult Detective Series by Six Renowned Authors. This included Fitz-James O’Brien’s Harry Escott, Gelett Burgess’s Enoch Garrish, Algernon Blackwood’s Jim Shorthouse, L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace’s Diana Marburg, A.M. Burrage’s Derek Scarpe, and Conrad Richter’s Matson Bell.

61qdubjkk8l giving up the ghosts

Unfortunately, Coachwhip don’t do e-formats, so we haven’t had a look at the new one yet. It does remind us, however, we recently re-read H G Wells’ The Red Room (aka The Ghost of Fear). This is one of the most worrying stories of the period and well worth finding on-line. It’s not quite what you might expect – a piece of psychological horror that questions assumptions and twists the usual ‘haunted room’ trope.

“Mention has been made of the weird work of H. G. Wells and A. Conan Doyle. The former, in “The Ghost of Fear”, reaches a very high level; while all the items in Thirty Strange Stories have strong fantastic implications.”

Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

You’ll also be able to read Tim’s take on such things again in his article ‘How to be a Victorian Ghost Hunter’, appearing in the first issue of Occult Detective Quarterly, which should be heading for the printers in about a week. The less savoury aspect of Tim’s work is that he wrote the excellent and most diverting Vera van Slyke paranormal tales. Such tales constantly threaten to sideline greydog’s own period Tales of the Last Edwardian. But if you really must, his book of Vera stories, Help for the Haunted, is tragically well worth it.

You can pick up a copy of Those Who Haunt Ghosts here:

those who haunt ghosts

Hanging Rock

from the film, sbs — from the 1975 film, sbs

Now to a book which not only caught the imagination of millions and which was also made into a major film. Picnic at Hanging Rock was written in 1967 by an Australian author Joan Lindsay (1896-1984). Originally an artist, Lindsay wrote a parody of travel books in 1936 under the pseudonym Serena Livingston-Stanley. She followed that with a number of factual works (on subjects such as the Red Cross, and on art). Then, in the sixties, she produced three new books – Time without Clocks (1962), Facts Soft and Hard (1964), and finally Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is not like her other work, although it’s said that she had experimented with some darker plays in the 1920s. It’s been described as a Gothic mystery, exploring death and femininity. The book concerns female students from an Australian women’s college, who go on a St Valentine’s Day picnic in 1900, visiting Hanging Rock, an area in Victoria, Australia, which is is know for its peculiar geological formations. The Hanging Rock itself is basically a large boulder balanced on two others.

The Wurundjeri

This area, north of Melbourne, formed part of the territory of the Wurundjeri people, but as so often happened, they were chucked out in the 1800s. Or bought out with blankets and sundries, as in John Batman’s ‘deal’ with them in 1835.

In fact the Wurundjeri seem to have had a rough time of it, being forcibly moved more than once.

“Wurundjeri dispossession of land took place not just through displacement, but also through disconnection. Land was sold, bush was cleared for the creation of roads and buildings, and wetlands were drained. Over time, even the course of the Yarra River was changed. The disruption of sacred sites might be termed desecration. For the Wurundjeri, who had a spiritual connection to the land, these changes had a devastating impact on all aspects of their health and well being.”

The Aboriginal History of Yarra

If you’re interested in Hanging Rock, then it might be a mark of respect to check out its original people.

aboriginal history of yarra

the hanging rock reserve, freeaussiestock.com

The Lindsay story: In short, three of the girls and one of their teachers inexplicably vanish, which has the community in uproar and provokes further disastrous occurrences for people at the school. Some readers considered the book to be a record of an actual event, and Lindsay refused to confirm or deny outright that the book was fiction. She even hinted that bits of it might be true.

“Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in the year nineteen hundred, and all the characters who appear in this book are long since dead, it hardly seems important.”

Lindsay, foreword

It is, however, pretty certain that it was what we experienced writers call ‘made up’. It provoked enormous interest at the time, and became known as one of the great Australian novels of the period.

Hanging Rock Secrets

The final chapter, which is supposed to partly explain what happened to the missing people, was apparently deleted at the request of the publisher, and not published until twenty years later, three years after Lindsay’s death. We should point out that the missing bit, The Secret of Hanging Rock, is only about 12 pages long, not a whole detailed breakdown of the what and why of it all.

Anyhow, in 1980, before the missing chapter was published, writer/critic Yvonne Rousseau wrote a book called The Murders at Hanging Rock, which offered a number of potential solutions to the mystery. As the SFE says, Rousseau presented:

“four mutually incompatible approaches to the novel’s central mystery include analyses in terms of classical detective fiction, Hermetic magic and Australian Dreamtime Fantastika.”

sf encyclopedia online

Ansible Editions, the child of that talented author and reviewer David Langford, have now produced the first e-version of Rousseau’s work.

“What really happened at Hanging Rock on St Valentine’s Day in 1900?

“Picnic at Hanging Rock is the source for this erudite literary entertainment, which will be enjoyed and appreciated by all scholars and lovers of unsolved mysteries. In The Murders at Hanging Rock, Yvonne Rousseau offers four logical, carefully worked-out but thoroughly tongue-in-cheek explanations of the fate of the missing picnickers from Appleyard College.

“Now reprinted with a foreword by John Taylor which casts yet more light on the subject.”

You can get hold of a copy here:

murders ansible editions

We came across this news yesterday. By genuine coincidence, we are seeking to acquire one of David Langford’s excellent Dagon Smythe occult detective parodies for ODQ as well. It’s a big, small world out there.

The greydog Writes

As our parting (or Parthian) shot today, we’ll remind you that if you like murder and mystery, a new John Linwood Grant tale, The Adventure of the Dragoman’s Son, is now out in Volume One of the new anthology Holmes Away from Home. Lots of Holmes, but no ghosts or Australians.

cf571ef2c226c2d06456697c853452a2_original holmes away from home vol one

Or you can spend mere pennies (almost) by picking up the e-book of old greydog’s substantial, five star rated novella, A Study in Grey, of which it has kindly been said:

“Some authors create names for a story, this author fills them with life and personality. I loved the controlled sense of suspense, and the sheer wit.”

“Grant masterfully weaves together these two seemingly dissonant fictional realms: the “no ghosts need apply” world of Sherlock Holmes and Carnacki’s, where ghosts not only apply — they prove worthy of the job.”

a study in grey uk

a study in grey us

By this you can gather that the freezer is low on dog food again.

In a couple of days – a terrific feature and interview on new weird fiction magazine Turn to Ash, with editor/publisher Benjamin Holesapple…

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King Arthur & the Writers of the Round Table

December 5, 2016 greydogtales 2 Comments

Who was Arthur of the Britons? Was he a king, a war-leader, a saint? Did he fight at Badon, and did he die at Camlann? There is, of course, an old Yorkshire legend that King Arthur and his knights lie in enchanted sleep in a cave in the Dales, only to be awoken in time of great need. At which point, local farmers will tell them to bugger off because they’re annoying the sheep. The last meeting of the Round Table will be at Betty’s Tea Room in Harrogate. Galahad will argue that he only had a coffee and one scone, whereas Bedivere had a macaroon as well…

graham chapman, perhaps one of the finest interpretations of king arthur yet

Hello, dear listener. Today we offer you an excellent interview with award-winning curator/editor Nicole Petit. Apart from other projects which we shall mention, this year Nicole took charge of a new anthology, After Avalon, for 18thWall Productions.

And it is to that volume we spring now, with some enthusiasm, for within its post-Roman walls lie post-Arthurian tales aplenty, as Merlin explains:

“In the days when Arthur’s dream was dimmed, as grey embers under storm, actors from our reverie still acted. A boy ventures into decaying Broceliande with the May Hawk’s daughter, both in search of fathers. Sir Gawain, bereft of his nation, rides in search of my tomb—but finds a friend turned enemy. In the Britain’s hour of need, the round table will be restored to defend Logres in the sky, in the London Blitz.

“My tutor, Bleys, will take a fool’s horse, and two adventurers will trace my dying steps across the world. Sir Lionel’s remains will visit the remains of the Arthurian world, and the Victorians will strive to make a gentleman of Mordred. The Questing Beast will never cease to haunt Pellinore’s line, no matter how far north they trend. The old witch, Morgan, will seek forgiveness. The holy lance will appear once more. And a queen who is no longer a queen will meet a knight who is no longer a knight, and both will marvel at the grave of the greatest king who served his country.”

We have resisted the temptation to explore the many hundreds of historical King Arthur trails, which is unlike us, because we really ought to hear from Nicole. Fantasy roots, curating versus editing, and Dr Who also rear their heads, so let’s get down to it…

An Interview with Nicole Petit

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Nicole. Today we’re planning to focus on your recent work curating the post-Arthurian anthology After Avalon – partly because we’ve just read it and if we don’t, we’ll forget what we’re doing. But we can use this opportunity to talk a bit about other stuff. Maybe you could ease us in by saying something about your fantasy roots, and how you got interested in the fantastical?

Nicole: Hey! Great to be here! I’ve been into fantasy for as long as I can remember, really. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of my mother reading Lord of the Rings to me. She did a mean Gollum impression.

I willingly chose to write an essay about Tolkien’s concept of the eucatasrophe in high school, so his writing has had a profound impact on me—not just as a writer, but as a person.

I also got into Brian Jacques’ Redwall series as a kid. I also developed a love of mythological creatures, like the White Stag and the Questing Beast and Reynard the Fox, which is something I brought with me into university when I wrote a story bible for a video game involving the three as playable characters. I got an award for that when I graduated, much to the confusion of my very Literary Fiction focused Creative Writing major.

greydog: Your current incarnation is as a curator/editor. You’re a staunch dragon enthusiast – you’ve curated two collections, From the Dragon Lord’s Library 1 and 2, and written The Dragon Lord’s Secretary. Tell us a little about the last one – was that your first major piece of fiction?

Nicole: I’m definitely a dragon fan, no hiding that!

Yes, The Dragon Lord’s Secretary is my first real finished story. It’s a smaller part of a larger series that I’ve been worldbuilding for years. James Bojaciuk approached me in our college writer’s group, having seen a portion of an entirely different story set in this same world, and asked for more of the setting.

To be honest, I decided to give him a story with dragons as a personal challenge. He’d told me that he hated dragons, never seen a good story with them in it. To cut a long story short, he loves them now.

greydog: You also put together the recent Just So Stories anthology, a tribute to and reflection on Rudyard Kipling’s original Just So tales. How time learned to be bedtime, why gravity holds us so tight, why ducks have such silly voices and more. In the anthology you included some genuine Kipling, is that right?

Nicole: That’s right! The Kipling stories we included are ones you don’t typically find in the prints of Just So, I’m not quite sure why they’re not included. It felt fitting to put them into the anthology that’s a tribute to his work.

King Arthur – Dux and Redux

greydog: Now, we must face up to the Big Man. King Arthur, Arthurus, Artor – he may not have existed. He may have been many people, bundled together to create a good story centuries later. He may have been a minor king, a leader of a small war-band or even just a particularly stubborn soldier. What would you personally like him to have been?

Nicole: I’ve always been a fan of Doctor Who’s interpretation of him in Battlefield, though I don’t know if I’d say I really want him to be an alien. From a purely factual/historical perspective I tend to side with the Riothamus theory.

rochefoucauld grail, 14th-century illuminated manuscript

But as far as what I’d personally like, I’m fond of the interpretation of him as a rebel warleader with a Viking wife just as much as I love the larger than life myth of the Once and Future King.

greydog: Riothamus is a good one, British and Breton. Given the subject matter, it’s fitting that After Avalon is as representative of the Arthurian legend as the historical tales, coming at the subject matter from all sides and offering multiple interpretations. The anthology is extremely varied (to its credit). Did you have to turn down many more ‘traditional’ approaches to the subject, the sort of straightforward sword and sorcery tales?

Nicole: There were a handful of those. I do remember one went and made Arthur an Orc. I expected a lot more sword and sorcery than I got, actually. I was very surprised, and very pleased, with the wide variety of stories that were submitted.

greydog: We’re not really a review site, but we will pick out a couple of stories that were particularly interesting. The Knight of the Ice Moon by Patricia S Bowne is effectively a medieval legend/tale in its own right, whose equivalent might be found in period material. What attracted you to this?

Nicole: Patricia wrote one of my absolute favourite stories in Just So Stories, “The Nidibalan,” so she’d already proven herself a capable author. And when I saw her submission, “The Knight of the Ice Moon,” I knew I was in for something great.

She has a talent for capturing the spirit of whatever I’ve asked for in the guidelines, whether it be a Just So folk tale or a work of Arthurian Lit. And that’s what I look for most in submissions, does this capture the spirit of the author/genre/time period/general theme the anthology is paying tribute to?

greydog: And the other was Claudia Quint’s Mordred, Beguiled, enjoyable in quite a different way for its take on Mordred/Medraut and his fate, set in Victorian times. It’s an affecting story, which reminded us that one of the key characters least covered in After Avalon is King Arthur himself. Was his presence in the shadows only a deliberate choice?

Nicole: My initial pitch of the concept of After Avalon was telling the stories of the aftermath of Camlann, and how Arthur’s absence affected those who served or fought him. So yes, although I didn’t explicitly ask for stories to keep him out (I don’t want to limit an author’s ability to surprise me with something I didn’t know I wanted), I did want to keep his presence more to the background.

greydog: What’s your own favourite piece of Arthurian literature, classic or contemporary?

Nicole: Well I already mentioned Battlefield, which has my favorite companion Ace referring to the legendary Excalibur as a paper knife, and a really great Morgaine played by Jean Marsh.

facing jean marsh's morgana — facing jean marsh’s morgaine in dr who: battlefield

It’s probably terribly cliché but my favorite classic is Gawain and the Green Knight. It was the first Arthurian tale I ever read and Bertilak became one of my favorite characters.

How to Editorate

greydog: You’re described as curating the anthologies with which you’ve been involved, rather than as editing them. The term curate has become far more common in the last ten years. It does have connotations of selecting and presenting fine pieces – even people like Neil Gaiman have curated. Is it editing but with a nicer hat? Or do you see a distinct difference?

Nicole: It’s definitely a different hat for me, I edit a few of the series that 18thWall has going on, Dead West being the main one at the moment, and the process is quite different. With Dead West I spend a lot more time doing the proper editing work—fact checking historical references, ensuring that the characters and world stay consistent, while also providing the author with assistance whenever they hit a creative road block.

Meanwhile when curating, I do things a bit differently; while I do some of the editing work still I am a bit less directly hands on with the pieces and spend a lot more time seeing each submission as a piece of a larger whole. My focus is considering each submission in relation to the overarching premise of the anthology.

greydog: Good breakdown. Speaking of your curator role, we can’t let you go without mentioning your work on Spiritualists and Speakeasies, the anthology due out next year, mostly because the old greydog, John Linwood Grant, is in it – and he needs every bone he can get. Care to give us a hint about that one?

Nicole: I can say that your story is one of my personal favourites in the collection! It’s a delight seeing you toss Henry Dodgson into America’s roaring twenties, with all those spiritualists and speakeasies the title implies. And more than a bit of hoodoo magic, handled in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen hoodoo handled before.

I’m more than happy to shamelessly plug for both of us and ask your readers to check it out when it hits the virtual shelves.

greydog: We have no shame – we have lurchers to feed. We were tempted to use the word Ace somewhere in the interview – and we gave in. Perhaps you could briefly share your recent Dr Who adventure with us?

Nicole: Lucky for you I even mentioned Battlefield, so it sounds like this might’ve been planned or something! I recently was blessed with the opportunity to go to the Long Island Doctor Who convention where I, among other things, got meet Ace herself, the amazing Sophie Aldred. It was an honour to meet her each of those three days I was there.

She was incredibly sweet, since I was cosplaying Ace most of that time we compared patches and pins and she even let me wear the famous bomber jacket. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t starstruck. I also got to meet the series editor of the Seventh Doctor’s run, Andrew Cartmel, and we were able to talk writing for a while and I learned a lot from him! There are plenty of stories I could tell, but that would take up a whole other interview I think.

greydog: We must cover Dr Who in more detail some other time. Finally, what’s next on your own to-do list, apart from Spiritualists and Speakeasies? Curating, writing or something entirely different?

Nicole: Currently I’m collaborating with James Bojaciuk on a Sherlock Holmes story involving the Dragon Lord’s Secretary herself, back in her younger wilder, western days caught up in a crime the master detective is trying to solve. It plays off events brought up in The Valley of Fear.

I’m also in the middle of editing a series that’s from the author of one of the stories in After Avalon, Bel Nemeton, expanding upon the world and characters of that short. There are some other series coming up on my plate, but it’s too early to say much.

greydog: Many thanks for joining us in the kennels.

Nicole: Thanks for having me, it’s been a great time!

You can find out more about King Arthur’s legacy by picking up a copy of After Avalon now, from 18thWall themselves:

after avalon

Or from Amazon UK or US:

after avalon amazon uk

after avalon amazon us

clive owen's king arthur — clive owen’s king arthur

Later in the week, lurcher news, supernatural book news and another very enjoyable interview, this time with the editor/publisher of the magazine Turn to Ash….

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Os Penitens: The Place of Nine Despairs

December 4, 2016 greydogtales 2 Comments

A brief visit to Os Penitens, the Mouth of War, today. I’m clambering through too many strands of writing and editing at the moment, so here’s a fragment of dark fantasy from a longer work which may become a full tale in its own right with time – or may not. The Gynarch alone knows.

It’s my favourite character of that city – the unusual Nemors…

The Place of Nine Despairs

These are not the hands I will use.

These hands are old. They do not straighten, nor do they grip with the strength that will be needed. And my daughter would ask me: Most noble father, is that murder, the shadow which clings to your fingers?

What would I answer? I have never lied to her.

“Yes, child. I have made murder on the enemy of my heart.”

It would not do.

So I go to the Place of Nine Despairs. I go to a meeting which no man should want, which most must surely regret…

She stood on the precipice, the heels of her boots on stone, the toes on air. Lichen-mottled strongholds loomed behind her; a three hundred foot drop lay before her. Down there, choked with travellers, the road called Isaine’s Sorrow snaked through the district of Deuseptis and did its duty.

The Nine Despairs was a terrace of worked stone, less than a spear’s throw wide, but longer than ten brigantines. Looking down, she noticed that the fall-nets were still tended, centuries after the last death here. History paid prentices to scramble up the crags and re-knot the ropes, clear out the nesting gulls, for history remembered cowards and honourable people. There were few of the latter now.

These days there were entertainments at the Nine Despairs, amusements for the sons and daughters of the gens. The iron baskets which had once held watch-fires were stacked high with perfumed woods, and children climbed on the ballista mounts, scraping their knees on rusted bearings.

She turned from the edge. It was late in the Hour of the Grey Snake, and tendrils of cloud were gathering in the east, talking amongst themselves of a dawn which was soon to come. Soon, and they would be grey no longer.

A time and a place for meeting strangers.

And here was the stranger coming, his cloak clutched tight, his head low.

I have need, he had said at a gin stall on Isaine’s Sorrow, five hours ago, and pointed up to the heights. When the Grey Snake ends, he added.

She had no objection to need. It tended to pay well.

He limped as he came, joining her near the edge but not so near. He was keeping to a section where some of the carved stone parapet had survived.

“You are Nemors?” he asked, letting his cloak fall. An old face. A sunken face, knots of muscle withered at the corners of his lips, shadows under almost colourless eyes.

“I carry no mark,” she said.

“No, you wouldn’t. Not if you were her.” He coughed, wiping spittle from the corner of his mouth with his cloak. “Nemors is not like others.”

“You will know who I am later,” she pointed out. “When you pay me.”

“Yes, of course. It concerns…. concerns the gens Malphebes.”

Nemors had nothing to say. The pointless, convoluted politics of the great gens held little interest for her.

“My name is Urien anIscales.” He showed her the intricate pattern of silver etched on the back of his right hand, the pattern which matched him to his name. In Os Penitens, anyone could hide behind a face.

A cousin of a cousin, without even inheritance rights in the gens Iscales. Her time was being wasted.

“There are others,” she said, and turned to leave. She had no interest in the small vendettas and grievances he was no doubt about to raise.

“I have mirifics, some of great age.”

Her robes of ochre and grey swirled as she faced him again.

“What is a great age?” she asked.

“The Thirteenth Year of the Lammergeier.” He coughed again. “And some from the time of Heresen Imperator.”

“I see. You have provenance?”

He smiled for the first time, a bitter twist of his mouth. “If you really are Nemors of the Last Blessing, then you will know them. Would parchment and book really help?”

The Tower of Falling sounded the end of the hour. Its knell was taken up a moment later by the thousand shrines and towers across the city, the brass mouths of guild bells, the horns of militia at the district gates, a wave of time which washed over the city until it was spent. In Os Penitens, there was no single moment, only fragments which followed another’s lead.

The Thirteenth Year of the Lammergeier. There were certain items of that period…

“What do you wish me to do?”

He came closer. “My daughter has been dishonoured.”

“Malphebes will no doubt pay recompense. They’re used to doing that.”

“You think that I would seek out Nemors for a matter of some foolish copulation?”

“It has happened,” she said, beginning to lose interest again.

So he told her why he needed her. She listened. It was a common tale, in its beginning, but it twisted as it went. When he had finished the telling, caught in a racking cough again, she swept back the hood of her cloak.

“Your daughter is alive, at least.”

The old man managed to look at her face.

“We are nothing to them. We are stripped of rights and dignity.”

She tasted rain on the dawn breeze, considered Os Penitens laid out before her. The first few drops of a long morning spattered her face.

“You wish this man, this Tetherian, dead?”

“Exposed, shamed.” he said. “Brought to some sort of justice. The magistrates will not act.”

“This might be done.”

He leant against the nearest crumbling section of parapet, his hand hardly keeping him upright.

“The mirifics,” he said, “Are our last treasures.”

“I heard you.”

“What else must I do?”

“Comfort your daughter, I suppose. I would not know. Tell her that all will be well.”

“Will it? Will all be well?” he asked, tiredness replaced by a sudden eager tone.

“I imagine not. But as for your dishonour, I will consider the matter.”

“Do you not care?”

“Not unless I am paid to do so.”

He levered himself up right.

“They say… they say that you are no longer human.”

They stood in the grey-pink shadows of the dawn. Eventually she smiled.

“Good.”

She was not as I had expected. A hard voice, and a harder face, yes, but she was not so greatly different in height or build from my Cristia.

I could not see her eyes, though. I had heard that there are colours in those eyes which no longer belong in this world, Gynarch protect us. I do not understand this, but I am relieved not to have seen such things.

I must beg the skinbinders. My chest is worse, and they raise their prices every month. There is little money and little honour left to anIscales.

One of these at least might soon be remedied.